Vagabonds! // A Novel

Vagabonds! // A Novel

Eloghosa Osunde • Penguin Publishing Group

ISBN-10: 059333003X · ISBN-13: 978‑0593330036 · 2023 · Paperback

Live offer for this book: 55 live copies of this book from $2 (as of 2026-09-15).

Dimensions: 8 × 5.1 × 0.8 in

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Completeness 48

Cover quality: good

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The Nile on eBay Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE AND THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD "If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it." —Los Angeles Times In the bustling streets and cloistered homes of Lagos, a cast of vivid characters—some haunted, some defiant—navigate danger, demons, and love in a quest to lead true lives. As in Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the queer, the poor, the displaced, the footloose and rogue spirits. They are those who inhabit transient spaces, who make their paths and move invisibly, who embrace apparitions, old vengeances and alternative realities. Eloghosa Osunde's brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their experience with underground sex work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that shifts her world. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city's dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their shadowselves, Osunde's characters confront and support one another, before converging for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion. Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Review Paise for Vagabonds!: "A vibrant blend of big-city life and contemporary mythology." —The New York Times "A novel as vivid and varied as the city [of Lagos] itself." —Harper's Bazaar "In a world that seeks to consign to the shadows those who don't conform, Osunde's vagabonds act as an illuminating force for one another." —The New Yorker "Ghosts and dueling deities occupy Ms. Osunde's wild, phantasmagorical portrait of a city. . . . A note of empowerment appears, turning [Vagabonds!] into a kind of rallying cry. It is in the hidden margins of a corrupt metropolis, the stories affirm, that truth and bravery are to be found." —Wall Street Journal "Tenderly brings those on the margins of society to the center, while highlighting their passions, their frustrations, and even their complex relationships with God." —Elle "Lagos has featured in any number of novels by Nigerian writers . . . but usually the gaze is relentlessly male. . . . Vagabonds! is different: it tells compelling stories of survival, about women seizing agency in spite of the forces ranged against them." —Adewale Maja-Pearce, London Review of Books "Much like Toni Morrison, Osunde spins her fiction from the shadows and scars of her characters, as much as from any goodness they possess. . . . A book in which love overpowers taboo, and long-repressed truths about Nigerian identity hold the center." —Astra Magazine "Steeped in magical realism and a narrative voice reminiscent of early Salman Rushdie, Eloghosa Osunde's exuberant debut novel. . . thrusts readers into the heart of Lagos, Nigeria. . . . [and] convey[s] the resilience and joy of its nonbinary, trans and gay characters, even under these oppressive conditions." —Minneapolis Star Tribune "If you read one debut novel in 2022, this should be it. With care, compassion and a gimlet eye for hypocrisy, Osunde builds a universe from Lagos, Nigeria's little-seen citizens: The gay, the trans, the abused and others.

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55 live copies of this book from $2 (as of 2026-09-15).

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